Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

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Microsoft has been tight-lipped when speaking about the future of its mobile strategy. We knew Windows Phone 8 was coming, but that was about it. Yesterday Microsoft took the wraps of the new software experience for Windows Phone 8, and it’s a massive upgrade over Windows Phone 7.5. So massive, in fact, that existing users are going to find themselves left in the dust.

Microsoft doesn’t exist in a vacuum, though. You can’t understand what a mobile operating system is worth unless you consider the competition. Let’s sort out how the features in Windows Phone 8 stack up against Android 4.0 and iOS 6.

Home screen

One of the most visible improvements in the new Microsoft phone OS is the updated home screen. The tiles are still there, but now they are more dynamic, and dare I say, usable. One of the issues with the Metro-style home screen on Windows Phone was that the promise of live tiles never really came to pass.

First-party apps did some neat stuff by showing off your pictures or social content, but third-party apps failed to take advantage. It was hard to justify adding huge tiles to your home screen that didn’t really do anything useful. The new home screen allows you to resize tiles, like the Windows 8 Start Screen, and the tiles will go all the way to the edge of the display — no more of that odd gap on the right side.

The other big change is that when the size of the tiles is changed, the data it displays will be different. For example, if your SMS tile is small, it will only show an unread count. Make it bigger, and you get the text of the message right on the home screen.

This is all very cool, but Android is still the king of ambient information with its robust widget framework. Android added resizable widgets in Android 3.0, and many of them have additional capabilities like direct playback control and flick scrolling. Android is far more customizable, but it still differentiates between icons and widgets. Windows Phone has found a way to combine the two concepts in a way that makes sense.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have iOS. Apple has resisted calls to make the home screen more customizable. In fact, the iPhone home screen experience is almost unchanged from its 2007 debut. App icons do have badges to show notifications, but that is the extent of ambient information without opening Notification Center where you have a few pseudo-widgets.

It strikes me as bizarre that the weather icon still doesn’t display the current weather conditions on iOS. Maybe what Apple is saying is that it’s always 73 degrees and sunny when you use an iPhone, right?

Now that Windows Phone has managed to clobber iOS when it comes to customization without losing its aesthetic charm, it’s time for Apple to step it up. Android is sometimes ungainly, but still has the most customizable home screen experience.

The core software

Much of what makes Windows Phone 8 new and different is made possible by the switch to from the Windows CE kernel to NT. That’s the same code that runs at the heart of desktop Windows, including the upcoming Windows 8. Microsoft has confirmed that all the Windows Phone 7.5 apps will continue to work on Windows Phone 8, but that’s where the similarities end.

Windows Phone 7 used a controlled development environment relying on Silverlight and XNA. It was easy and user-friendly, but it lacked the power that many developers wanted. There was also little to no opportunity to reuse code from other platforms. With the new OS, say goodbye to all that.

By moving to a new framework, developers will be able to make use of native code in C and C++ along with SQLite and DirectX to make better, faster apps. Microsoft’s big advantage here is that developers will be able to reuse large swaths of code from desktop Windows on Windows Phone, especially on touch screen devices like Surface. Many Windows 8 programs will simply work on Windows Phone 8 without any modifications at all.

All of the best games on iOS and Android are written in a similar way. Apple gives developers simple tools to access the hardware in Xcode, which is why games run so well on that platform. The limited hardware ecosystem makes it easy to target devices.

Android development is a little more unusual. Android runs a modified Linux kernel at its core, but there isn’t any cross-compatibility. Most apps are coded in Java, which is non-native. However, the platform does support native code for more intensive apps. Hardware differences make this a little trickier, but the support is there.

Tagged In

WOW!!! amazing article. So rare to find an article about mobile computers that is not biases towards iOS, and as a result filled with misinformation. The author actually used the systems he was writing about, so that he could make informed comparisons.

http://twitter.com/jamespipe James Pipe

seconded

warcaster

No, they are just biased towards Microsoft. But I guess you’re fine with that.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

Microsoft can have my babies.

http://geek.com/ sal cangeloso

They will – and they will default them to Bing search.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

Hahaha. A fate worse than death itself. How can I ever bring children into the world knowing that?!

Have you used it? I used it in a store for a few minutes and found it to be really busy. “Live” tiles just don’t seem like a good idea to me. They enable every app to spring out, which clutters the UI and my mind.

I hear too many people make claims to the horribleness of software, specifically operating systems, without having actually used them.

Cameron Cole

Good job on the article. Fairly well balanced and something unexpected after the deluge of MS stories pronouncing it the king of all OSes on a variety of sites.

charles dawkins

Sorry but I have to argue this. Windows Live Tiles vs Android Widgets. While I agree that Widgets are more powerful and can do more on screen you’re still limited to the amount of widgets that you can display on screen. Then there is the battle of organising your icons and widgets and not all widgets are resizeable. Live tiles are just as good and provide the information necessary but the options are endless. You can pin Contact/Groups, Maps, Web pages, Weater, games, Music (artist, genre, playlist), stocks, searches, sports scores, local scout, and just about any app and get some kind of live tile feature plus there are tiles that you can create. Then there is in-app pinning like specific moves in Flixter, or theatres that you visit in Fandango that will provide live tile for what’s currently playing, Radio stations from Tune In Radio or Slacker, Groupon deals of the day, Spicific stoocks can be pinned, TV Shows from the Prime TV App, Slacker and Soundhound have tiles that jump straight to the music identification. In-App pinning is just so powerful and personal as your screen becomes taylored to you and your intrest and not apps and everything flips and rotates and provieds information beautifully and there is no end to it and it’s organized nicely. I think Windows Live Tiles trump Android Widgets when you look at the whole picture.

Rodaz

Live tiles are not as good as widgets as they both may show information widgets allows you to control and interact the widget with out opening the app which live tiles cant do. Plus you can force widgets to re-size if they don’t.

charles dawkins

Yeah I not only have a Windws Phone but there is an Android Nexus S in my house running ICS. Both are good but the variety you get with Live Tiles plus the unlimited Pinning just makes for a greater experience. Android doesn’t provide this much variety. Your stuck to 7 Home Screens and 4 on my Nexus S. It’s annoying when you can find space to fit everything or widgets like Youtube or the picture widget are ackwardly shaped and provide space constraints and like I siad before not all widgets are resizeable. Here is the bottom line though. Windows Phone 8 and Android ICS are way better then IOS6 and their Siri Gimmick.

Rodaz

Android has many varieties, there are ROMs with unlimited phone screens so you can add every widget and icons you want :P and you can force widgets to re-size but most come with a variety of sizes as for the shapes well they are what ever the widget is suppose to be like a clock widget would be round. Yh WP8 has addressed some concerns I had about WP and am likely to get one if there is good hardware to go with it. To be fair Siri makes sense when using gps but yh apart from that I don’t see any scenario I would want to use it.

charles dawkins

Nice, I didn’t know that there were ROMs with unlimited screens. I did notice that I was able to resize something on a buddies Android that mine wouldn’t do. I guess not all Androids are created equally.

Rodaz

lol yh it can just about do anything. :( yes not all androids are equal which is why it some times get a bad rep due to poor devices and buggy ROMs.

justd80010

The average person going into a store and purchasing a smartphone doesn’t want to root it crack it or hack it or tom it or any of that crap, this is why Iphone continues to lead in customer satisfaction and desirability surveys… because they work as advertised in almost every case and you don’t have to hack the OS to get it to do what you bought it to do. And widgets are cool but they completely block whatever you pasted to your screen so so much for “customization.” It’s a headache, with live tiles you know where they came from, what control or info they are menat to provide.

If you like widget that’s cool but I don’t know where the notion that they are more powerful comes from… you can pin a tile from within an app on WP to feed you very specific information that only YOU care about, like bids on an Ebay auction. That’s far more useful day to day then being able to do stuff like pin the weather or turn antennas on and off.

Rodaz

You don’t have to root it or crack anything to resize widgets :/ each android phone is different so you pick up the one that works for you, that’s the point of manufactures having their own skins and stuff as it differentiates their products. Android doesn’t have as high customer satisfaction because there are also poor budget android phones and has nothing to do with features as Android 2.2 has more features than iOS 6 or widows phone for that matter. What are you on about so much for customization? widgets are located under the widget in the app drawer, is it that hard for you to figure this out? and you select what sources you want the widget to pull so its even better.

Widgets are better as they have more functionality, you gen interact with whats on the widget which you cant do with live tiles like I have a youtube widget that shows videos on my feed and I can just swipe down on it to fee the other videos on my stream. You can choose what information widgets pull so widgets are better than live tiles so widgets do everything live tiles do and more. And what do you mean by they block what you pasted on your screen? you cant put widgets on top of anything :S

justd80010

The suggestion was if you want widgets on your phone and they aren’t supported, or if you only have 4 screens and want 7 or unlimited screens you can just put a rom on your phone… very few people know that and even fewer WANT to know that… these aren’t $1500 PC’s, the average purchaser isn’t a tech enthusiast or Android enthusiast… they just want the device to do what it said it was going to when they read the spec sheet at Best Buy… Android has a poor customer satisfaction becuse there are too many version of the OS, nobody knows when or if they will ever get updated and the core user experience isn’t very good…

Go into the widget menu on any given Android phone and there are more than a few for calendar or music or clock or calculator, some take up a whole screen, other half, some just 1/4… and to find that out you’ve got to select them and just see what they do and then remove or replace them if you don’t like it… and it can take hours… and in the end you’ll just look at your phone and think, “sooo, this thing kinda looks like crap…” an that’s just the nature of Android, it looks like the kit cars my friends have in their garages, those things always look like sh!t to me but my friends think they look boss… okay… they really don’t and they never will

I mean widgets block wallpaper… so the lovely picture yse pasted of your Hawaii vacation is going to be blocked by your ugly calculator widget, or facebook widget, or sea of icons… the functional part of the OS gets in the way of the user experience overall. That’s what I mean.

charles dawkins

While I agree that the Android widget youtube is a nice touch, let me give you the way WP does it. I can take for example SuperTube a 3rd party Youtube app (No thanks to Google for not supporting WP) and pin each subscription that I want to the Start screen and it will update and show new videos when they arrive and the tile flips with one side showing the most recent video and the other telling you what subscription it is. Also the same app allows me to pin a youtube recorder to the Start Screen so I can record and post to Youtube. Which is more powerful?

Rodaz

The one that allows you to take full control and view what’s videos are on your stream while taking the as little amount of space as posible and not needing you to have multiple widgets well in your case tiles of basically the same thing. The YouTube downloading is nice, obviously the official one doesn’t do that but there are loads of third party ones that do but I’ve never felt the need for them so yh I’ve never downloaded one before :p

justd80010

No, you’re name calling because you’re a bitch with a weak argument… you keep talking about the limitless abilities of Android as if anybody besides a 17 year old, pimple faced nerd that lives in their grandmother’s unfinished basdment WANTS to unlock the damned things. Too dense to understand that most of us don’t live in a whole in the ground like you and don’t think that kind of thing is fun and won’t do it… EVER.

Rodaz

lol its not my fault you lack the intellect to follow simple instructions aha launchers tell you in plain simple English how to change stuff but hey like you pointed out, its too much for your brain to handle. So you stick to WP because that’s the only one you are capable of using and leave iOS and android as they are too complex for you. Oh and I don’t need to resort to this as I have been the only one to bring facts while all your brought was opinions and the facts you tried to bring where all incorrect like when you kept on insisting that Android cant be changed unless if hacked or whatever which was just incorrect as its the only OS you can customize without jail breaking or hacking as all you do is simply download an App which does all the work or like how you said updates keep nagging you as if there wasn’t auto update which there is :/

So what can’t Android do?

justd80010

I guess we might have to wait until WP is in widespread release across all the major carriers and customers can compare the platforms and vote with their wallet… I think many of us find customization within the predictable and consistent experience available on WP to be better than the ‘wild-west’ customization options on Android.

Rodaz

WP doesn’t have customization, you cant even select a wallpaper or the color of the background. And yh people like you that lack the brain power to swap a wallpaper, icons and widgest should stay well clear from android or iOS for a matter of fact as its the same. Consumers have already voted with their wallets and Bada won which is not available in most places and certainly not on any of the big carriers so even with that advantage as it has some carriers big carriers backing it, it some how still managed to lose. Oh and android has the biggest market share plus the S3 is the fastest selling gadget, not phone but gadget so people love it. Android is predictable if you like HTC phones then you will always get sense which is the same on all their phones or the same with touchwiz. How do you manage to use a computer as it seems like you are incapable of using any form of electronic unless if you are told what to do. Android is consistent based on manufacture which is why you get people that like Samsung phones or you find that they don’t like them because of touchwiz and they know that all their android phones will have this so they wont buy them so its that consistent. Plus WP doesnt even have folders and by the looks of things everything on the home page will be an endless sea of icons creating clutter and to make it work they all flip changing colors which will disorient you.

Again Bada has a bigger market share even though it has less availability that WP and funny thing is Bada looks like Samsungs Touchwiz so people love the look of OEM’s roms.

justd80010

yeah, I know you can’t defend your argument without the pre-pubescent name calling because your argument is weak and you’re weak for making it. So many of us use Android that we know it’s UX is inferior to Iphone and WP.

WP doesn’t offer to allow you to”customize” your screen only to turn right around and block that very customization with a function of the phone like Android does.
Because the designers of WP realized, probably from testing Android phones, that that’s EXACTLY the kind of thing that sucks and makes people dislike their phone. With WP you customize within the predictable, uniform framework of the UI you’ve chosen. The WP UI gets out of the way of the user. No hacking or romming or sideloading or skinning needed. You’re probably one of the only people on earth who would try to push the ridiculous notion that Android is predictable… it’s not… most people don’t even know what version of Android they have or what the experience will be like from device to device. Two people could sit next to one another each with an Android phone and have an entirely different user experience with Android right out of the box let alone what happens once each begins the tedious and painful exercise of “customizing” it. Again you make my argument for me… the reason why the OEMs are skinning Android is because they know, just like Android’s competitors and millions of users, that the core experience sucks, that it’s unsatisfactory to and for a large percentage of users so they are investing millions into addressing the issue… good for them. Until recently if you wanted a smartphone and weren’t on AT&T your only “choice” was Android… so how many of us actually CHOSE Android… not many… it’s clear that the #1 choice of consumers is Iphone but I suppose as an Android groupie you’re going to dispute even that basic fact. You’re just a shrill, little minded,cheerleader .

8088y12

Windows Phone is VERY customisable. There’s the simple colour theme to start with: foreground colour (green in my case) and light or dark background theme (I usually have mine dark/black). Very simple, but the relative lack of choice does give the UI a lot of consistency (the theme colour filters through to all applications to highlight hyperlinks and phone numbers, etc. that can be clicked, so I know on my phone that anything green is a selectable/clickable element).

Then there is the personalisation that comes from tiles. My phone screen, for example, has a live tile showing my contacts and any recent social status updates cycling through; the latest scores from my favourite soccer team and their emblem; a picture of the artist I last played music from on my music tile; the game I’m currently playing the most (with my current progress on the live tile); my Xbox Live avatar jumping up and down in the cool outfit I gave him; a social update tile for my favourite band; and a couple of my most-used apps.

That is VERY personal (and none of it is non-standard or requires any know-how).

Yes, Android provides more options. I have a great animated wallpaper on my Android device, and I could have tons of different widgets if I wanted.

Saying that WP7 is not customisable is just plain wrong.

Windows Phone has an equivalent to folders: hubs. If you install a game it goes into the Games hub (like a folder but with more stuff like Xbox features); if you install a media app it goes into the Music and Video hub; photo apps go into the Photos hub. It’s not as flexible as Android folders, but the trade off is that it is all automatic, and your main app list is not cluttered with apps that are installed to hubs.

Any clutter on the home screen is completely up to the user on Windows Phone. You can have as few or as many tiles of whatever size you want. It seems like you’ve not used Windows Phone. You don’t seem to understand that there are actually some fundamental differences between the way WP7 works and the way Android works, and comparing specific ways of doing things is not a simple matter of one way being better. I love Windows Phone, and I really like Android…but they are very different experiences, and neither is suitable for everyone.

Rodaz

So two choices is what you call very customisable? even stock HTC phones come with more themes than that and its themes changes everything so this consistency you are talking about is there. So what can I chose green as my background colour instead of black or white or blue as I asked before?

Eveything in your second paragraph can already be done in android as a widget and better as you are given control over it so instead of having to wait for it to cycle through you control when it changes plus you can get more information as widgets can be bigger than 2×4 which is WP limit.

How is rearrange icons well live tiles and choosing a black or white theme very personal? lol doesn’t sound that personal. Sounds like its very likely that what ever you do to WP it would look like everyone else since there are two theme choices and a few colour choices for the foreground and people will likely be picking popular colours so yh not very customisable is it now. customising on android is simple so to change wallapaper all you do is while you are viewing a it just hit the menu buttin and set as wallpaper, its that simple and to add widgets it just like adding icons to you home screen but on that you go under the widgets tab.

So WP is still cluttered as there is no where for other types of apps so like utility apps will all be separate making a mess off things that and you cant split them off so for instance you cant have a separate home page for certain types of use like Media, Office and so on like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMiY1kSTHZw so yh very messy. There are many WP launchers, get a better one but yeah there might be a few things missing or not working exactly as they should. I have tried out WP on a Lumia 800 and it was okay. I was considering getting one but after talking to you well that very unlikely. I like technology in general and I need to stay informed for my course that I always look at what happening in the industry. I know the advantages and disadvantages of Android, iOS WP and you didn’t even come close to touching upon Androids disadvantages. Android can win by comparing how they function as WP cant even do some thing or by the number of steps taken to do anything so the less amount of steps taken the better it is. Funny think is I’ve watched WP from launch but got put off by the Hardware as it was outdated and yeah people kept saying it doesn’t need dual core and stuff but I never felt comfortably with it as it didn’t seem future proof well that and costs which where too high as I could get a way better phone for around the same price of some of thos WP like for instance recently the Lumia 900 was just released and it was going on amazon for £500 which is the same as for the GS3,iPhone 4s, One x and so on so. Comparing specs is important is it gives you an insight of the devices limitations like for instance due to the dated WP hardware so far not a single WP is capable of 1080p recording. The launch WP hardware didn’t even have front facing cameras so video chat was impossible. Now it looks like you need to look at a WP specs to know what Apps it will run as some don’t work on devices with less than 512mb ram. Yeah people have different preferences and the perfect phone is the one that works best for you.

8088y12

Not two themes. Two background choices and about 10 foreground colours. It’s a trade-off between consistency/quality and choice. For example you can hack a WP7 device to have a yellow theme, but it doesn’t give good enough contrast with certain things (white text, for example).

I didn’t say Windows Phone was as customisable as Android (in fact I pretty clearly said Android was more customisable).. I simply pointed out that a Windows Phone can be personalised a lot (certainly more than iOS).

Did you not take note of the examples I mentioned? There is plenty of personalised stuff on my phone’s home screen. You can tell a lot about me from looking at my start screen – what music I listen to, what soccer team I support, who my closest friends are, my Xbox avatar, some of the apps I use. That is what personalisation is. I didn’t say any of this was exclusive to WP.

As for live tiles – yes, Android widgets can emulate them, but the OS doesn’t automatically support live tile functionality, so it’s easier for a Windows Phone dev to implement them, and it’s an integral part of the overall OS design/UI (i.e. 3rd party Android apps don’t have live tile functionality).

I acknowledged that Android is the most customisable mobile platform. My point was that it is wrong to say Windows Phone can not be personalised, and I clearly showed how that is wrong.

I don’t know what you mean about cluttering of apps on Windows Phone. There are already different screens for certain types of apps. They are called hubs. Games are in the games hub, music and video apps are in the music and video hub. Office has its own hub (Excel, Word, OneNote, Skydrive, Powerpoint). Hubs are better than folders in some ways (they are not simply collections of shortcuts, but can include other related content), but they currently can’t be manually created and changed.

The WP launchers on Android are all terrible. They mimic WP at a very superficial level. They don’t have the functionality or the ‘feel’ of Metro. And of course since Android apps are not designed with live tiles in mind the whole exercise is pointless. Android’s UI works best for Android.

I didn’t touch on Android’s disadvantages because that wasn’t the point of my post. I was showing that WP can be customised to a good extent.

Android has plenty of drawbacks. The biggest one for me is the inconsistency of apps (due to the differences in hardware possible). Some don’t work at all, some don’t scale to the correct resolution, some exploit the openness of the OS by spamming notifications and ads, there is a LOT of crap on the marketplace, the OS requires beefy hardware to feel responsive and smooth.

That said, the complete openness has many advantages too (such as choice of form factor/price point, tons of apps, tons of customisation options).

All of these platforms have benefits over each other, and the best option depends on what you value most. I went from Android to WP because I wanted a more elegant, simple experience.. I don;t want a phone that works like a computer, I want a phone that requires as little work as possible to get me the info I want.

Rodaz

Yeah I’ve listened to everything you have said but I was just saying that 2 themes and a choice of a few colours doesn’t sound like a lot to choose from but they that’s opinion based. Yeah I listened to all the examples but just sounded like average stuff but I guess I’m just used to them that I didn’t see much signification in them but I guess there is since its something not available on iOS.

Okay I’ve not tried these WP launchers but yh some things wont work as the OS or apps where not designed with them in mind. Yeah you mentioned the Hubs but there are many types off apps that wont come into the categories that those hub consist of by the sound of things so like for instance apps like Whats app, Bus checker, Evernote, iFunny or skype and so on. There are apps that don’t fit into those categories so what happens to them?

If you didn’t try to touch upon Androids disadvantages then what was all that thing up updates nagging you and stuff?

Inconsistency due to different hardware? well that sounds like iOS and wp as they all dont have identical hardware or screen resolution. but yeah some Apps don’t work like how Skype don’t work on some WP devices but yeah your right. As for android needing beefy hardware you seem to be misinformed, read this https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s

8088y12

Apps not in a hub go into the app list and can be pinned to the home screen. It’s a different approach. WP8 will bring it a little closer to the power of Android in that respect (i.e. more apps can fit on the Start screen at any given time.

Android has far more ‘fragmentation’ than iOS or WP. IT’s absurd to suggest otherwise. All WP devices are currently on the latest version (7.5) unless the user has chosen tnot to upgrade. The only difference is that some devices have less RAM and can;t run a small number of apps that require full specs. That’s pretty good considering that there are so many different WP7 devices. iOS is also in a better state than Android here. Apart from those few apps that require 512MB RAM every WP7 app will work on every WP7 phone exactly the same.

WP8 will be a break – current devices will get a cut-down update, but that is unavoidable due to most of the update being hardware changes. Android devices are distributed among several different versions. Updates are often never delivered or are delivered va long time after they are put out by google.
Current WP apps will all work on WP8 and it is likely that most non-hardware features from WP8 will make it to WP7.. This is light years ahead of the experience of Android.

Android’s openness is a double-edged sword here. Total flexibility, but that means that each device has a lot of differences that need to be addressed. Each WP7 devices is essentially the same hardware (same processor, same screen resolution, same RAM) except for the low-end 256MB models that won’t run a handful of apps.

I’ve used plenty of Android devices. Not a single one of them has had a consistently smooth UI close to that of every WP device. Sure, some of the newer models are pretty damn smooth with their dual-core CPUs, but they still often struggle to be as flawlessly smooth as a single core WP7 device with way lower hardware specs. Google have improved this a lot since my last Android phone. My ICS tablet is pretty smooth for the most part…but still not reliably perfect like my phone.

Rodaz

How is android more fragmented when No WP will be getting updated to WP8 which breaks compatibility with apps as WP8 uses a new framework meaning apps made for it wont run on WP7.8, what could be worse than that? Yeah some devices cant run popular apps like Skype but somehow works on other platforms with less ram and it even works on some devices with 128mb ram on other platforms. Other Apps don’t work because there have a gyroscope or something like that so Microsoft’s Photosynth app.

Yeah updates are pushed to devices late after google publishes the code as manufactures need to start working on coding it for their devices which is why I said each android device is unique as bad coded ones will be buggy or slow or whatever as the manufacture places a lot of work in it. ICS took a long time to get out as it was such a huge update but updates would be out quicker like they where from 2.0 to 2.3. Most of the changes in WP is not hardware but software framework so current devices are losing compatibility with upcoming apps.

Each WP is not the same as they have different processors, screen resolution, ram, some have 256 and others have odd ram amounts like 384mb like the Samsung Omnia M. Even now some WP7.5 devices have 800mhz or 1ghz or 1.4 you need to look to know what you are getting

Well that’s your opinion which I disagree with and I would say android is not only smooth but its also faster as it doesn’t throw tons of transaction affects at you to distract you while it tries to load the next tasks as its dated hardware takes longer to process the information.

8088y12

All current apps will work on all WP7.8 and WP8 phones (again, except for the small number that need 512MB). Most new apps will still work on older phones (providing they don;t use WP8-specific API calls). There is no issue with screen resolution (all WP7 phones have the same res and apps will be scaled up by the OS for the higher-res WP8 screens, and apparently it works flawlessly).
How many different Android devices are there with wildly different specs? Google and app developers have no control over what hardware their software runs on.

I think you misunderstand WP7 specs. FIrstly, all WP7 devices have the same screen resolution. Secondly there is a minimum spec that all must meet (certain CPU speed, the already mentioned screen resolution, and RAM/storage). All devices must have 256MB RAM or more. Full spec is 512MB RAM. Low-end phones can have 256. Any phone lower than 512 is treated as a 256MB phone. As far as functionality there are currently two WP7 devices – full spec (512MB) and lo-spec (256MB)/ According to MS data over 95% of apps are certified to run on 256MB devices (i.e. ALL WP7 phones), and that’s not taking into account apps that can be optimised to work on 256MB devices. All WP phones have at least 1GHz CPU.

Currently there are only 2 possible spec types for WP7 as far as any functionality or apps are concerned. This is absolutely better than the Android situation.

WP8 does make things a little worse, but even that brings the total number of device types (for compatibility purposes) to 3. (256MB WP7.8, 512MB WP7.8, and WP8). Hardly a huge problem. And it’s trivially easy for a dev to code an app for all three targets. One of my apps uses a function not available to 256MB devices, and all it needs is a single line of code that essentially says ‘ignore this section if the phone has less than 512MB RAM’.

In contrast Android apps have to try to function on an unknown screen resolution/specs.

If a WP7 app won’t work for your device it won’t install. I know from experience that many Android apps will install and then not work or work poorly with my device’s resolution or even Android OS version.

Compare the experience of a cheap Android phone with a cheap Windows Phone – the minimum specs of a Windows Phone ensure that the experience of the OS is always smooth. While a Samsung Galaxy phone may be really smooth, the same can;t be said of the low-end Android phones.

So on the Windows Phone side you have 3 possible phone types from a dev’s point of view (256MB WP7.8, 512MB WP7.8, and WP8). Any app that works on any WP8 phone will also work on any other WP8 phone, and the same goes for the other phones. Also, all apps that work on the low-end phones will of course also work on the higher-up devices. When WP8 launches 100% of apps will work on it, and their live tiles and screen resolutions will work perfectly. Most apps made after WP8’s launch will still work on the older phones unless they use WP8-only APIs (and even then it is trivial to code the app to simply ignore the functions not available on older phones, such as NFC).

The situation on Android is dire in comparison. Many apps won’t work on the cheaper phones that don’t have enough power. Screen resolutions (and aspect ratio) differs dramatically from low-res 4:3 screens to near-retina 16:9 and everytyhing in between. It’s hard enough to create a nice app UI with one screen resolution in mind, nevermind having to make sure it can scaled to different shapes and sizes. Because Google can’t guarantee what resources are available to an application there is a lot of potential for apps to not work on certain devices. Because Android devices can be on any version of Android from 2.1 up to 4.0 there is no way for apps to consistently rely on the devices’s capabilities. Currently 100% of Windows Phone devices can upgrade to the latest version (7.5) via official channles. It is likely that once 7.8 is released it will be available on 100% of devices within a very short time (now that MS have fixed their previous shambles of an update process).

It’s ridiculous to claim that Android is not the most fragmented of these platforms. It’s a side effect of Android having the most open platform. WP does a pretty good job of being open enough to have different devices but closed enough that there is very solid consistency between them.

Rodaz

Yes all current apps but apps made for WP8 wont work on 7.8 however WP8 would be able to run WP7.X apps. WP well will have different screen resolutions so how is that different from Android? Apps don’t need control over the hardware as apps are ran in a virtual machine so build one run everywhere which is why android apps will run from arm CPUs to x86 as all manufactures need to do is make sure they code the virtual machine to run on their hardware. Oh and once again they are both the same as some WP devices cant run certain apps so are you going to have this double standard and say it matters that some adroid devices do but its opkay for WP even though it does the same thing?

All WP don’t have the same specs then but a range so stop saying they have the same specs when they don’t. Yeah I had made a mistake, thought the 610 had lower resolution. Not all WP have 1ghz minimum as the Lumia 610 has a 800HMz SoC, look it up.

How are there 2 possible spec types when you have 800MHz, 1Ghz, 1.4Ghz and infact there are 2 different types of 1Ghz SoC used as they are now using a more up to date one and the way that android handles apps the hardware decomes irrelevant as manufactures just need to get the virtual machine working which is why android runs and various hardware. Yes android Apps basically function like how modern operating systems like windows or OS x works as they adjust even though there are various resolutions, aspect ratio, hardware so Android is smart enough to make it all work and doesn’t need to be told for each device.

You are told if the app is compatible or not with your device and if its not it wont install so I don’t know what you’re getting at as it doesn’t install plus it also doesn’t install if the app is not supported in the country that you are in too.

Low end phones like the Galaxy Ace are dual core and have 768 ram so you get better hardware for a low price and once again your experience with android will depend on the device that you get so if you look around you can get a good android phone for cheap like the Galaxy ace 2 that I’ve just mentioned.

All apps made for WP8 that use the new framework or native code like C and C++ wont run on WP7.x and developers where all cheering when MS announced this so you know which one Developers want to you and not all apps that arrive with WP8 will run on WP7.x as there are some apps like N.O.V.A 3 wont work as they are made using native code which is not available on wp7.X

Most apps run from 2.2 and up and once again android apps are ran in a virtual machine so the hardware doesn’t matter as apps just need to be developed to run in that one place. WP is the most fragmented platform ever as App compatibility is being broken through the use of new development tools that are unable to run on WP7 and are not just APIs but the type of code used to make apps. 0 WP got updated to the latest OS and are stuck even though phones are it are just a few months old. Even the 3gs is still getting updated to be able to continue running apps even though its older that the whole of WP and not only does it use a single core but one that runs at 600MHz too and will continue to be able to run new apps where as WP wont be. Once again its more than just APIs but native code is C and C++ so WP7.x basically stops getting apps.

8088y12

Yes, the Lumia 610 has a slightly slower CPU. But it’s negligible.

You’re missing the point. WP7 has standard specs. Android doesn’t. An Android device can have almost any spec the manufacturer wants. WP devices must adhere to strict specs. The Lumia 610 is a slight exception, but in reality an 800mHz CPU is not going to ‘fragment’ anything or break compatibility at all.
Apps made for WP8 will work on WP7.8 if they don;t make use of WP8-specific API calls or if the dev chooss to make the app compatible by letting it run on older devices without those newer features.

Even if you consider the 610 as a separate specced device that still only makes 4 different WP types compared to the potentially hundreds of different Android phones and tablets.

You say that certain WP devices can’t run certain apps and then state that this makes the situation the same as on Android. That isn’t the case. There is a small amount of fragmentation on WP, but there is a huge amount on Android. Currently more than 95% of apps will run on every single WP phone with no need to scale graphics. The number for Android would be impossible to determine, but there is no way in hell that 95% of current Android apps will work equally well on all Android devices.

When I say WP devices have the same spec I am referring to the minimum (which only the Lumia 610 breaks).

To the apps/devs/user experience the precidse CPU speed is irrelevant. All apps will run with guaranteed performance on 1gHz CPUs, and all but the 610 have at least this cpeed. All apps are native to the same screen resolution that all WP phones have (480×800). All WP7 applications are required (i.e. forced by the SDK) to never use more than 90MB of RAM and will therefore run on all devices (all devices have minimum 256MB RAM).

The way this works is that an app must work properly on the minimum spec (MS has rules around app load times and responsiveness, and apps that don’t load quickly and respond fluidly on 256MB devices are rejected).
You don’t seem to understand that as far as an app is concerned there are only 2 types of WP7 devices. The actual CPU speed doesn’t matter.

You develop an app that is either compatible with all WP7 devices or one that is compatible only with 512MB devices. The performance and appearance of the app will bne consistent across all devices (with the possible exception of faster load times or improved performance in certain specific scenarios for the newer/faster models).

On Android there is an almost infinite number of target devices. The screen resolution could be very low or very high. The screen ration could be 4:3, 16:9. 16:10. Some screens might not rotate to landscape. Some screens have better touch capability than others. Some devices have good graphics processing some have barely any (all WP7 devices have the same graphics capability). Some Android devices have dual core processors and some have slow single-core processors that can struglle with modest apops. On WP all apps are required to work fluidly on the lowest possible spec, so the actual CPU speed doesn’t matter.

There is no double standard here. All mobile platforms suffer from ‘fragmentation’. It’s inescapable. But clearly ANdroid is the most affected because Android has the most diversity of hardware and software/OS version.

WP has a very modest amount of differentiation in hardware, and so far all devices have the same OS version. Android has unlimited hardware differences and several different versions of Android are considered ‘current’ on different devices.

Lots of apps will install on Android and then not perform optimally (e.g. the screen resolution won’t be a match or the device won’t perform very well). You say the hardware doesn’t matter on Android…you’ve obviously never tried to run a 3D gam on a low-end Android phone. You’ve obviously never used multiple widgets on anything less than the most powerful Android phones. I have, and it ain’t pretty.

I’m getting a bit tired of explaining that apps made for WP8 can work on older phones. Older phones will not support certain features, and these can be removed from the app when it is installed for older phones. This is how certain features are left off 256MB devices now – you mark a block of code in the app and tell it to only run if the device has 512MB RAM. This is how WP8 apps will work on WP7 phones but without features that older phones can’t access, such as new hardware.

Older phones do not stop getting apps just because it’s possible to make apps that only work on WP8. That’s nonsense. That’s like saying new Android apps won’t work on 2.2 devices because Android ICS has features not available in 2.2.

The majority of apps made after WP8’s launch will work 100% on older phones. Certain types of apps won’t.

You’re consistently missing the point here: WP7 has some fragmentation; Android has a LOT of fragmentation.

The user experience on Android depends on the version of Android they have and the power of the hardware Both of these factors can vary a huge amount. You could have a brand new Android phone on 2.4 with slow hardware or a brand new Android phone on ICS with killer specs and a high-res screen. Both are going to be very different experiences, and that excperience extends to the reliability and performance of apps.

Apart from very minor hardware differences, the user experience on WP is identical. It doesn’t matter what phone you have because they all meet one of the two tiers of minimum requirements. The OS version (and therefore feature and app compatibility) is identical as all WP phones are able to upgrade to 7.5 (this is clearly not the case with Andorid).

I don’t know why you’re arguing this. It’s a no-breainer that Android suffers more from this problem.

Saying that WP7’s minor hardware differences are comparable to the unlimited iterations of Android devices is pretty laughable.

Rodaz

Erm the 610 does fragment as its the one that cant run skype or those other WP apps. All WP apps made using C and C++ wont work on WP7.X as its native code which is coming to WP8 but not 7.X. C and C++ is widley used and MS done this to make it easier for Devs to port apps from Android and iOS so prepare to see most apps not working on your WP7.X device.

4? more than 4 as there are 4 different SoC combinations and and 3 ram choices and once again the hardware is taken out of the equation on android as it runs in a virtual machine. Devs just need to worry about the app running in the virtual machine while manufactures worry about making the virtual machine working on their hardware. Its like with Direct X on pc as there are various graphics cards but by making sure the software runs on Direct X it will run on any hardware that runs Direct X so the hardware is irrelevant for android but for WP yes it is as Apps are made on a per device configuration instances.

Yes WP is more fragmented as 4.0 just added new APIs for instance out off all my 200 apps on my device only one requires 4.0 and thats chrome so for me its 0.5% if I was stuck on 4.0 which is hard to imagine since even the 1st android device ever released can run 4.0. To make matters worse not only are current WP getting updated to the latest OS but not all current WP will be getting 7.8 which is just a launcher. Luckly Nokia phones will be getting some new apps that where shown at the Summit.

Again Android runs in a vertual machine so hardware doesn’t matter or aspect ratio as I stated before as its ran in a virtual machine which does all the work. Android scales just like a modern operating system like Windows or Mac OS x. oh and not all WP have the same hard ware but a range so stop insisting they do as its a fact that they don’t.

Wait so its worse to have a wide choice of hardware that can run all apps and version of the operating system to having a limited choice thats incapable of running all apps and versions of the OS? lol okay

I’m getting tired of explaing to you that WP8 has native code thats not available in WP7.x and C and C++ which is not available on WP7.X so it cant run apps made for WP8 that use this, what part of this don’t you get? So upcoming games that are being ported over like N.O.V.A wont work on your WP.7.X device as it doesn’t support native code which the app utilises, get it now????

Apps being ported over wont work on WP7.X as they will utilise C or C++ do you understand now amd these are widely used languages.

Rodaz

@justd80010:disqus

Widgets are available on all phones but the layout depends on the skin or ROM that comes with the phone. The point about ROMs is if for what ever reason you dont like whats on your phone you can change it like for instance I had a stock GS2 with touchwiz up until about a month ago then I decided to change just coz I was bored and wanted something new. Android is simple but yh your right android can do anything if you know what you are doing like a $1500 PC. And android gets updates and if it doesn’t again chances are there is a 3rd party ROM like cyanogenmod for your device plus this way it better as you have a chance to get an update unlike WP which doesn’t even have a single device getting the latest update making it the worst supported platform and past that Apps would also become incompatible making things even worse where as most apps on android work from 2.2 and up aND EVEN NOW SOME apps like skype wont even work on some WP even though it was made for WP. Yh android as a OS getts dragged by poor devices or buggy ROM’s on poor devices.Widget come in different sizes and you choose the size that you want and you dont have to select anything to find out go under the widgets tab and it shows you all your widgets and different sizes so you know if it does before trying to place it on screen so I don’t see how that will take you hours, its like selecting where to place an icon. Well if you don’t know how to customise your phone then I suggest you give it to someone else to lol that’s not the OS’s fault that you lack creativity. lol widgets block wallpaper? so on your screen you must have no icons or live tiles lol oh wait WP doesn’t have wallpapers xD anyway being serious now erm some widgets are transparent and some even let you chose how transparent you want them to be. lol block the wallpaper you know xD everything you put on your phone will funny enough the only thing that could not are widgets as they can be transparent. And Android doesnt have a see of icons its all sorted out nicely by folders and widgets on you home screen that you so choose and the rest in the App drawer. WP is a see of icons by the looks on things and doesnt even have folders to manage that so you are stuck with an endless flood of icons all multicoloured like a pack of sweets. Oh and if I really wanted I could make my phone look like WP or iOS, Android does it all.

justd80010

You’re making my point for me… Yes, you can hack just about anything onto Android, but as I’ve said few even want to know that… just like few want to know you can force engines of various sizes into classic cars, and even when you do these things after hours of “customization” the end result is still poor. Android just doesn’t look good…
I know the Widgets have some transparency but they still block whatever wallpaper you’ve taken the time to paste on your screen and that’s super annoying. I’m not comparing this to WP because WP doesn’t waste time allowing you to put things on your screen that are then blocked by other things on your screen… I’d be very surprised if I’m the only Android user that thinks that sucks.
SOMETIMES there will be small/medium/large versions of widgets true, but on most of them you have no idea what size they are until you pick them and see them on your screen… and it you don’t like it you have to remove the widget and go thru the steps of doing it again… I’ve had an Android for 2 years and I just gave up on “customizing” it… it’s just too much work.
Android is kind of like Myspace was, you customize Myspace all day long… and put crap on your page like falling letters and animations that were distracting and hard to read thru or around and that often made the page take all day to load… and that seems really awesome to millions of people until Facebook came along and seemed clean and uncluttered and ADULT and proved that endless customization isn’t a good thing because it means you might be endlessly customizing when you really should be using.
After two years I wouldn’t suggest an Android to anybody I actually love, I would suggest Iphone, because it’s just a better platform for most users, and we’ll see with WP8 – that looks like it may offer the best user experience overall. I understand some people will always love their Android and enjoy installing ROMs and hacking the OS… just like some people really like hacking networks and PCs and rooting the registry and all that jazz… but for most of us that is a useless, entirely un-desirable exercise.
You can waste time MAKING your Android look like Iphone or WP orrrr you could just buy an Iphone or WP and for most that’s probably the better option because in almost all cases what you’ll end up with is a phone that looks like Android… and that ain’t pretty…

Hi justd80010,
You were mentioned in a comment by Rodaz:
justd80010 Widgets are available on all phones but the layout depends on the skin or ROM that comes with the phone. The point about ROMs is if for what ever reason you dont like whats on your phone you can change it like for instance I had a stock GS2 with touchwiz up until about a month ago then I decided to change just coz I was bored and wanted something new. Android is simple but yh your right android can do anything if you know what you are doing like a $1500 PC. And android gets updates and if it doesn’t again chances are there is a 3rd party ROM like cyanogenmod for your device plus this way it better as you have a chance to get an update unlike WP which doesn’t even have a single device getting the latest update making it the worst supported platform and past that Apps would also become incompatible making things even worse where as most apps on android work from 2.2 and up aND EVEN NOW SOME apps like skype wont even work on some WP even
though it was made for WP. Yh android as a OS getts dragged by poor devices or buggy ROM’s on poor devices.Widget come in different sizes and you choose the size that you want and you dont have to select anything to find out go under the widgets tab and it shows you all your widgets and different sizes so you know if it does before trying to place it on screen so I don’t see how that will take you hours, its like selecting where to place an icon. Well if you don’t know how to customise your phone then I suggest you give it to someone else to lol that’s not the OS’s fault that you lack creativity. lol widgets block wallpaper? so on your screen you must have no icons or live tiles lol oh wait WP doesn’t have wallpapers xD anyway being serious now erm some widgets are transparent and some even let you chose how transparent you want them to be. lol block the wallpaper you know xD everything you put on your phone will funny enough the only
thing that could not are widgets as they can be transparent. And Android doesnt have a see of icons its all sorted out nicely by folders and widgets on you home screen that you so choose and the rest in the App drawer. WP is a see of icons by the looks on things and doesnt even have folders to manage that so you are stuck with an endless flood of icons all multicoloured like a pack of sweets. Oh and if I really wanted I could make my phone look like WP or iOS, Android does it all.
======
You can check out or reply to the conversation here: http://disq.us/7v96uj

Rodaz

You dont need to hack android to do anything that I’ve said, widgets are already like that in fact I have HD widgets or something like that lets you customise them from shapes to font and colours. And everything on a phone would block the wallpaper and if your such a fan of no wallpaper like on WP just remove it, its that single and all done without needing a rom or anything and to change how your phone looks just download a luncher on the play store and change it to look like how you want even like the pack of sweets that wp is. Anyway didn’t bother reading all your reply past the 1st paragraph. and it states in the widget drawer the size of the widgets, you know 1×1, 2×1,2×2,4×2, and so on if your lack the intellect to comprehend this then I’m sorry but nothing else can be done for you lol all that I’ve stated about customising doesn’t require anything special as you can do it on any stock android device. I leave you with this question, what cant Android do?

justd80010

No you don’t NEED to hack Android, but you can… that’s what people are saying… “if it doesn’t do x just hack it…” and nobody wants to hack the phone they just took out of the box.And the only customizations you get out of the box are the ones the OEM gives you… if you want others you have to… duhn, duhn, duhn… hack your phone and force it on there. With live tiles you know what they do… no hacking needed

I’m glad you love Android… congrats… widgets are cool but live tiles are cooler in most cases. You’re overstating the Android experience like a 13 year old cheerleader taken by the varsity QB who refuses to recognize he’s only that good to her (you).

Overall the Android experience is inferior to that of Iphone most certainly and even to that on the hobbled, 2nd generation, feature lacking Windows Phone…

Don’t be too blinded by your pom-poms and short skirt to recognize the truth about your products like you’re a paid endorser or something.

Rodaz

How you intellect is just shocking you don’t need to hack anything I stated all you do is go on the play store which comes with every android device and download a launcher and you can change everything within that from icons to transaction affects to the sweet pack that is WP. Widgets come on the phone already and you can add more by downloading them on the play store. So which part of that did you require a hack? And lol iphone you know xD Android 2.2 has more features than iOS 6 which isn’t even out yet and soon Android will be on Jelly bean. Next time do your research before spouting this garbage of yours. lol guess your still mad about 0 WP getting the latest update ahahhaaaaaaaaa even the 3gs is getting updated to iOS 6 and its older than WP all together haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

justd80010

for most users “customize” = break your phone… customizing Android is just the beginning of the problems with the OS. There’s a reason why Android ranks last among the major mobile platforms in customer satisfaction and there’s a reason why the largest Android OEMs have invested so heavily in skinning it… because most people don’t like it the way it is and don’t want to spend hours and hours “customizing” it.

Going back to the original argument WP ranks so high among its users because they know going in what the UX was going to be… Who the hell knows what you’re going to get with Android… start putting things on there and next thing you know you’re battery life sucks… or your phone lags, or forces restarts, or constantly nags you about updates…

Android will grow up eventually thanks to Samsung mostly but in the meantime it feels a lot like Windows circa 2001… and most of us are past wanting a 2001 like experience in 2012 – especially since there are viable alternatives on the market that don’t feel retro at all.

Rodaz

Customize is not = breaking and manufactures have skings to differentiate and add functionality like the S3 has smart state and all other features that are not found on any other handset. Oh and if manufactures what to skin because it looks bad then WP must be ugly too as manufactures want to skin that too and are trying to push MS to. No one spends hours customizing, are you that brain dead that it takes you hours to arrange your icons and widgets and select a wallpaper?

If WP was so good then why does Bada have a larger market share? and the phone doesn’t lag well if you get high end phones. You need to look at what you are bvuying like some WP cant run skype which is terrible and WP cant even get skype notifications unless if its in for foreground because it struggles to run it. Oh and android doesnt have a problem with force restarts or apps closing lol in fact Forbes even done an article showing that iOS chases more than android, google it. Android has auto update so I dunno what yo are on talking about nag you with updates. Oh and if people liked so much how WP looked they would just download one of the WP launchers, its that simple and this way they wont have to deal with the draw backs of WP. Skins are there to change your experience and how good it is will depend on your phone like for instance the Galaxy S3 is the fastest selling gadget and there is a reason why that is, because it has a good experience and the latest hardware. Battery life also depends on your phone like the Lumia 710 has crap battery life so you need to look at what you’re getting.

Android is the most advanced OS, doing more than any other OS. What cant Android do that it needs to mature?

8088y12

I’d suggest you install one of the Windows Phone themes available for Android and compare how it works and feels to an actual Windows Phone. It may look similar, but it ain’t the same. I’ve tried it on my Android…and it’s a terrible imitation. And that’s not even counting the fact that apps don’t interact with the skin and provide their own live tiles like many Windows Phone apps do.

Android (so far at least) can badly imitate the Windows Phone UI only in a very superficial way.

actionjksn

You’re wasting your time trying to talk sense to this little pussy. He thinks putting a bigger engine in a classic car is a disaster. What kind of little punk has that mindset. He’s one of those guys whose afraid to mod anything. He’s just a little bitch who thinks anything that has been modded is a big mistake. And he lacks any knowledge about cars but yet he tries to talk about them like he’s not a little girl, even though he is a total little girl.

actionjksn

“you can force engines of various sizes into classic cars, and even when
you do these things after hours of “customization” the end result is
still poor.”

OK I don’t know if you know anything about cell phones but when it comes to cars or classic cars, you need to just stop talking. Seriously man just stop. You just made yourself look like a complete imbecile. If you don’t know anything at all about cars except how to turn the key or put gas in then that’s fine. And you really really don’t know ANYTHING about cars. Why would you try to use an analogy about “forcing” engines into to them? By the way people have been putting bigger engines into classic cars for decades and they don’t force them and they don’t have end results that are poor. Where did you get this information? If you’re going to use analogy’s try using something where you at least have rudimentary knowledge. If you are a girl then I apologize. Because what you wrote sounds exactly like something a girl would say. Are you a girl? Cause that remark was definitely girl materiel.

justd80010

Look stupid, you can customize a car any kind of way you want, for it to do all kinds of things, .. just like you can Android… and in both cases they generally end up looking like total sh!t… because most people aren’t designers and have no eye for customizing anything at all… that’s why most garage projects never look good and that’s why most Androids never look good…

But choose whatever analogy you want… it doesn’t matter… they UX in Android still won’t be as good as their competitors because users will never be able to customize a UI that looks as polished and complete and easy as the ones designed by professionals… just like dudes in garages can’t make their cars look like the ones that roll off the assembly line in Detroit.

actionjksn

After the car shit you just wrote guess who is really stupid? You were talking about forcing bigger engines not aesthetics dipsht. forcing a bigger engine in a classic car is a bolt up job you f***king moron. Now stick to talking about your cell phones you little girl.

8088y12

While you are mostly right (i.e. Android is totally awesome in its customisation), making an Android device look like Windows Phone is not going to make it function like Windows Phone. For example widgets are not the same as live tiles. Live tiles are very power efficient (i.e. they are not running code).

If you put Android on WP7-level hardware it would run like a dog. The low-level OS is not as polished. And a big part of WP7’s charm (and iOS for that matter) is the overall consistency and fluidity, which Android still doesn’t quite match (that is a downside of all the flexibility and customisation). For example, any app will run exactly the same on any WP7 phone, but on my Android device I constantly download incompatible apps or apps that have a dodgy screen resolution or some other glitchy thing.

Saying that the more open and flexible platform has the best of all worlds is a gross simplification. There is a drawback to that flexibility.

I love the idea of Android, but the experience is sup-bar.

actionjksn

Those jerks, they said you could upgrade your OS without buying a new Windows phone. Why did they renig did they do it just to screw people or are the older WP7 devices not able to handle it? My wife got the HD7 and I’m still using a flip phone. I’m glad I waited I will probably get this Windows 8 phone, if I can get it at least close to free. I won’t pay one and two hundred dollars for a cell phone when I’m signing a two year contract.

8088y12

FYI Microsoft never said you would be able to upgrade any WP7 device to WP8. Not once.

It’s a shame you can’t, but people are making a mountain out of a molehill. WP7.8 will probably have all the features of WP8 that work on current hardware. Microsoft haven’t shown much of WP8 yet, so we don’t know for sure what WP7.8 might include beyond the new start screen. I expect WP7.8 to be similar to the experience of putting the latest iOS on an older iPhone.

Excellent article. I’m really considering WP8 as my next device and this gives me a lot to think about.

sagar pareek

future battle between samsung with android v/s nokia with wp8 and apple’s ios will diappear in few years

chojin999

MetroUI is a huge failure. People already rejected it on smartphones with WindowsPhone having just 2-3% market share.
At Microsoft they must be completely out of mind wanting to oblige the use of MetroUI everywhere from desktops to servers to tablets. It could have been understood it WindowsPhone had been a huge success and gained 15% market share or more… but MetroUI proved being a failure already. Other than a few Microsoft fanatics no one wants to waste time with such a childish unproductive nonsense interface. MetroUI is the most retarded interface ever seen in IT history.

http://profile.yahoo.com/DN3AANCPGV7Y4HBIKCDH7CGRI4 rowell

failed for a stone age like u..OS is evolving cant u see?

chojin999

“evolving” nonsense marketing c*ap to justify bad products and bad designs.
MetroUI is unproductive, it’s a mess.
Since when it became evolution in IT being obliged to waste triple the time to do the same things that can already be done quickly by anyone?
There is no advantage using MetroUI, it’s a flawed nonsense childish design.
You Microsoft employees are just plain pathetic. You seriously think to be able to make a fool of people forcing them to waste time on this mess of MetroUI ?

8088y12

You can’t call something unproductive and then not provide some actual evidence to back up your claim.

To save you time I’ll explain how you are completely wrong.

On a phone the Metro UI (and the integration that is part and parcel) lets you get information quickly (via live tiles) and lets you perform a lot of common tasks without the need to do as many steps as on iOS and Android (e.g. social stuff, local search).

On a PC the Metro UI enables a simpler interface for tablet-style scenarios. When using a desktop PC the Metro stuff can be ignored (except for the Start screen). The new Start screen is very easy to use – larger ‘icons’ to hit, the power user features are all accessible in a separate place instead of mixed in with applications. For most users and most use cases the new Start screen is an improvement because it makes it easier to access applications and settings.

Nothing takes ‘triple the time’. On Windows 8 a few things are a little harder to do (e.g. power off a PC via the software takes an extra click – but this scenario is basically legacy anyway), but most stuff is either exactly the same as Windows 7 or actually easier (e.g. the customisable Explorer ribbon and quick access toolbar let you access the functions you need without having to trawl through a tedious menu system).

Windows 8 isn’t perfect, but it’s not the ‘unproductive mess’ your ill-informed comment accuses it of (albeit with no evidence…no doubt because you are talking a load of nonsense).

Keep your lies to yourself. If you have some legitimate gripes bring them up instead of just spouting hatred about something you clearly don’t understand.

chojin999

You Microsoft employees are just plain silly.
You go on with your advert on how cool and quick MetroUI would be and whoever tells you otherwise you reply that they don’t provide evidence.
So pathetic.
All your babbling is not going save nor sell MetroUI.
MetroUI is a disgrace. Quick? What is quick in having to deal with such a silly childish interface playing with the tiles?
On WindowsPhone with MetroUI everything is so confused and messed up. The text is a mess to, with menus and options scattered everywhere and huge portions of the screen void.
And obscure unintuitive multi-finger combos hidden here and there with no clear reason to be there and to use.
On desktop and server Windows8 things got only way worse then.
Forcing users to go back and forth between the silly full screen MetroUI mess and the limited desktop that Microsoft is now selling as “legacy” and wants to kill asap.
Nowadays many people can even be dumb but not as much as Microsoft managers think!
And surely any business using computers for their work, developers, professionals but even power users such as gamers won’t waste their time with the MetroUI mess.

Also, an UI doesn’t need anything “to understand”.
You at Microsoft what want to do now,uh? Create a degree that people should get to use MetroUI, perhaps?
A User Inferface that it’s not immediately clear and productive to 90% of users it’s just a failure.
Forcing the adoption of this mess of MetroUI telling people that “they don’t understand it because it’s quick and it’s cool” it’s really silly and pathetic. You won’t make a fool of people this time.

8088y12

LOL. You have no idea what you are talking about.

WP7 is quick because it takes fewer steps to complete many common tasks. Want to find the closest restaurants – one click. Identify that song on the radio – two clicks. See the latest comments on your Facebook/twitter – just look at the live tile. App load times are very fast (Microsoft will only publish apps with a very short load time as part of their approval process, and the overall OS is very polished for the hardware it runs on).

Please explain what ‘obscure multi-finger’ combos you’re talking about. Pinch-to-zoom? Same as Android. Windows Phone doesn’t make much use of multi-finger gestures at all, which you would know if you were talking about something you had any knowledge of. Windows 8’s touch UI is mostly the same, with simple swipes from the sides of the screen to bring up the options. Nothing more complex than iOS or Android.

Text is a mess? LOL…WP7 uses a consistent, clear font with a single highlight colour for clickable text. The theme colours available are restricted to those that provide good contrast between the text and background.

Menus and options scattered everywhere? LOL. Windows Phone has a single settings ‘app’ (like Android’s) and applications have a common swipe-up menu area for in-app options that is consisten across all apps. This is also available in Windows 8 Metro apps.

Nobody needs to go ‘back and forth’ between the Start screen and dektop in Windows 8, not that this is any different from using the Start menu in Windows 7 anyway (other than you no longer need to look down in the corner and carefully keep the mouse hand steady while navigating a nest of tiny folders). You make it sound like users spend lots of time in the Start menu…it’s supposed to be in-and-out. Load your app quickly then start work on it. This scenario works better in Windows 8 because the Start screen is more useful and it’s easier to click the larger tiles (and you can fit more on the screen at once).

You’re so clueless it’s difficult to know what to say. Metro isn’t aimed at business. They will stick mostly to the desktop until/if their needs can be accommodated by a simpler UI in future (there are lots of business cases where a simple interface can be beneficial, such as where users have a need only for a small number of tasks). Businesses will likely stick with Windows 7 for a while (just as they have stuck with XP). As more tasks are translated to Metro and iPads businesses will look at Windows 8 or Windows 9 in the coming years.

You make the incredibly dumb and illogical assumption that an optional way of using a computer is being forced on people. Microsoft kept the desktop because people need it. Microsoft developed tablets with an emphasis on keyboards and Office because people need that.

I don’t work for Microsoft and never have. You’re using a pretty common tactic of trying to discredit the facts I’ve presented because you have no evidence to back up the lies you’ve posted.

chojin999

No evidence? What evidence? You keep babbling
Microsoft press release ads promotion for
WindowsPhone and MetroUI and you reply you
don’t work for Microsoft and anyone should trust
you?
Anyone that goes around telling that MetroUI is
quick it’s either paid by Microsoft or has some
revenue selling Microsoft phones.
There is nothing quick about MetroUI.
If WindowsPhone was so quick and cool then
how comes it only gained 2-3% market share,uh?
And you seriously think that the WindowsPhone8
is going to sell more? Seriously?
What does it offer? The same MetroUI
interface people already rejected.
Other than Microsoft employees and a few fanatics
buying WindowsPhone no one wants to waste
money on MetroUI.
And on desktop and servers trying to defend
the awful MetroUI it’s just plain insane. Only a
Microsoft employee could defend that mess.
Keep telling people that “they don’t get it” and “they don’t understand” and “they don’t grasp the beauty of MetroUI” marketing babbling c*ap and you’ll see how many will go in a rush buying MetroUI …

8088y12

Notice how I explained HOW Metro is quick. That’s called evidence. If you disagree you need to explain how I’m wrong. But you can’t so you throw out the old ‘you must work for Microsoft because you disagree with me’ nonsense.

What does marketshare have to do with the UI speed? That statement is completely devoid of any logic or reasoning. The reason WP7 has only ~3% marketshare is that Android is a juggernaut and iPhones are popular. WP7 just might not be enough to sway people from what they already like and/or know. That has nothing to do with the speed of the UI. Most people will buy what is marketed best or what they are familiar with. That is generally not Windows Phone. I do know that people’s perception of Windows Phone is VERY different after they have actually used one. It’s difficult to understand how much better it is at certain things without using it. I though WP looked dumb when I first saw it. After I actually used one for half an hour I went straight out and bought it and put my Android in a drawer.

I haven’t once mentioned sales. It’s irrelevant, and I don’t care. I’m simply stating that you were lying about the Metro UI’s efficiency and usability by providing evidence that proves you don’t know what you’re talking about. Feel free to explain how anything I said is wrong (though that will involve you spewing more lies).

I expect WP to grow a little in marketshare over this Christmas period, but it won’t put a dent in Android or iPhone. Not that that is at all relevant to the UI design.

Windows 8 will sell over 300 million licences in the first 12 months it’s on the market. We’ll see how people react to it. So far everyone seems to like it except for closed-minded knee-jerk reactionary technophobe luddites like yourself. Most users will simply accept what they get and learn to use it. In facgt most people seem to take to change quite well – something new justifies the expense of their new computer. It’s mostly the more entrenched users that are scared of change, ironically.

Put simply, if you think that a small change from a STart menu to a Start screen is going to deeply affect anyone or their work you are nothing more than an idiot. I know it’s not nice to call people names, but if you’re going to act like a little change to a part of Windows that is hardly used is going to ruin someone’s life…I have no choice. That is idiotic.

And of course…there are already 3rd party tools that replace the Start screen with something similar to the Windows 7 Start menu for those that just can’t stand a Start screen that’s easier to use and customise. That’s part of the benefit of Windows – you can hack it and customise it quite a lot.

Your argument holds no weight. All you do is cry and complain about a small change to Windows that will hardly affect anyone, and you act as if Microsoft has dramatically changed their OS and made it unusable…because the Start menu is now full screen.

Seriously, what is wrong with you? You don’t have to like it. But you’re not even being rational.

chojin999

You provided evidence calling me an
idiot?
You Microsoft employees are so
delusional.
Continue with your marketing
tactic and you will see how many
millions will be in a rush to buy Win8
or WinPhone8 with MetroUI.
You clearly have no clue what
people use computers for.
From common users to power
users to gamers to professionals
to developers.
You really have no clue.

kinect_dev

The irony here is that while this is a HUGE update to WP, there is really very little that will change for us loyal WP users. Support for 100 cores won’t make apps or the OS itself run any faster, they already run plenty fast on one core. Developers are already able to reuse large swaths of WPF Windows code and XNA XBox code. Sure, a few more games will show up as a result of the new C++ support, but I doubt that will add any additional banking apps (the only thing really missing from the marketplace). Windows Phone is good enough as it is, but I suppose it’s all about checking off those checkboxes these days.

Mike_Acker

the key question: did MSFT research customer inputs or just cook this thing up in the garage? we’ll know, soon enough.

EXCELLENT ARTICLE!! Good un-biased summary all around! This is the pattern for all future round-ups!

Perry_F

I really want MS to succeed with WP8 but I’m leery. Been a happy android camper since I got the G1 years ago but I’m willing to give MS a shot, especially now that they’re going to unit the desktop OS and mobile OS. This could be huge. But the way they are going about scares me. That and the lack of good devices on ALL carriers bums me out. Was hoping the lumia 920 would be available on t-mobile but instead all we got from nokia was a dumbed down version of the 820. Will have to give the 8X and Ativ S a look. I did play with a lumia 900 at the AT&T store when they first came out and I was impressed at how responsive the OS was. Competition is good and if MS can get their act together they can really compete. People need to bear in mind that in the computing landscape no one has a bigger footprint than MS